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Congratulations for being the first person to be kicked from this thread. ..Al

🤔🤨🤷‍♂️

This is an asinine question. Albert has run this website for over 20 years and has been an active and reliable producer of homebrew games during that time. Not once has he ever promised something and then failed to deliver. To compare him to Tommy Tallarico in any fashion is beyond ridiculous.

Whatever we might think the worst move made by Atari in its various incarnations over the past 50 years might have been, it wasn't hiring Albert and acquiring AtariAge. Albert is the greatest, and having him brings Atari closer to greatness. Albert, I hope they treat you well, and I hope they treat the community here well. If they simply leave well enough alone, and support you financially and maybe with a helping hand with producing cartridges, and securing rights agreements/licenses, it'll be a beautiful thing. Of course companies have to protect themselves against liability, and protect their rights, which as we've seen will mean some things will change -- things, which, I think were inevitable anyway on a long enough time scale. But overall I have the same good feeling about Atari Age that I've had for as long as I've known about it. Which is quite a bit longer than I've had this forum account. @Albert if your alternative choice was to shut things down that would have been worse and I still would only have good things to say about you. Thanks for everything you do to keep the Atari legacy systems alive and relevant to us diehards, congratulations on 20+ years of this, and here's to many more.

This is not a new protocol. If you act like an ass, you get kicked out of the thread. It's not the end of the world... the person can still go on their way, discussing things, hopefully without being an ass, in other threads. The person also has opportunity to appeal to the moderators, in case there's mitigating circumstances. He didn't get kicked out of the thread after the Tommy T mention. Albert saw that right away, and let it go. It wasn't until he said he was "just having a laff" and "time for a flame war dude" that he got the boot.

That is not going to happen, as someone else said earlier, most people who just want to discuss video games more casually are going to use social media to do so, leaving forums to those who invest more serious time in the hobby. Of course, that's not a hard and fast rule, but the forum has already been around for over 20 years. There have been plenty of temporary spikes in new members for various reasons over that time, and the forums have weathered those events just fine. It's also grossly unfair to prejudge members who might join because they saw a "viral post" somewhere. I welcome new members to the site, regardless of how they may learn about it. Your argument is also weakened by the fact that the member above who I kicked from the thread joined the forum over TWENTY years ago. ..Al

Hello All, My name is Ben Jones and I work for Plaion. I'm responsible for the manufacture and production of the Atari 2600+ and am here to answer any relevant questions on the machine. First off in response to Thomas, indeed the compatibilty list has not been updated since the announce. I expect it to be updated in about 2 weeks.

I had one of those "aren't you glad you are too busy to quickly complete tasks" moments this week. Yesterday, I was searching for an empty 3-ring binder when I came across my old Sony Handycam DCR-PC100. In the same plastic tub were a few digital tapes and 8MB memory sticks (and a PCMCIA card reader!) with vacation, wedding, and various other memories from 20+ years ago. I never got around to transferring anything to a computer probably for lack of time and maybe even due to hard drive capacities/cost. I started to refamiliarize myself with the device. Everything worked quite nicely except the batteries, no real surprise there. Alas, I could not figure out how to transfer the files. SVideo and composite did me no good. I found a cable labeled "serial" that had a USB square connector that plugged into the camera but the other end was a 6-pin connector that didn't look familiar to me. After fast-forwarding through a few of the tapes I started to get ready for bed and that's when it came to me: could this be a firewire cable? My old Shuttle SB51G Pentium 4 has firewire at the front of the case, like this: A few weeks ago, I had torn down my SB51G with the intent of recycling it. I had not yet wiped the hard drive so I put all the parts back together, fired up the PC, logged into Windows XP, and plugged the firewire cable into the port. I was pleasantly surprised that Windows Movie Maker launched and asked me how I wanted to capture the video from the camera!! After mucking around a bit, I successfully transferred my first video and now I have another new project. Usually, I discover that I need something shortly after I get rid of it. Fortunately, this was not one of those times!! Here's a picture representative of the camera. The 120x zoom was really fun to use during a trip to the Canadian Rockies.

We've had new guys come in before with their snarky comments and thinking everyone else is dumb. No matter what, if they're going to be that way, they're going to be eating humble pie sooner or later.

Yeah, Let us just hope that they don't put out some new product that uses "2600" in the name...

- Will the Atari 2600+ consoles sold in Europe be compatible with 2600 PAL50, PAL60 and NTSC cartridges? Or will European consoles only support 2600 PAL50 cartridges? The console sold in all territories is the same unit, it runs both PAL and NTSC 2600 cartridges. - Will the Atari 2600+ consoles sold in Europe be compatible with 7800 PAL50 and NTSC cartridges? Or will European consoles only support 7800 PAL50 cartridges? Same answer as above - the console runs bath PAL and NTSC 7800 cartridges. - Will the new cartridges ("Berzerk Enhanced" and "Mr. Run and Jump") sold in Europe be PAL50, PAL60 or NTSC? Or will these new cartridges be region free, including both PAL50 + NTSC? All 4 carts arriving with the Atari 2600+ are NTSC format. - Which emulator is used for the 7800? The 7800 developer and beta tester community would prefer "a7800" emulator to be used. It was forked from Dan's original Mame a7800 driver, and is nearly cycle accurate, allows for mid-scanline graphical changes, has faithful pokey emulation, ym2151 emulation, etc. Prosystem 1.3. I was advised to use a7800 and we did try, but I dont beleive it was fully compatible with arm based chips like the Rockchip 3128 we use. - The Atari 7800 has a pause button. With Atari 2600+, in 7800 mode, will it be possible to use the color/black-white switch as a pause button? See here and here for further information. I'll ask about this. - Will the Atari 2600+ support 720p output? Thinking not only of those who own small diagonal LCD TVs (or in any case of older construction) but also those who have some fantastic CRT TV capable of 720p input. Default resolution of the console is 720p. - Will HDMI output produce a completely clear image? Since it looks like there will be no option to choose additional filters then I hope that no filters will be applied by default. Its completely clear, bilinear filter is off and nothing else is applied. - I'd just like to share a thought, in case there will be a hardware update at some point. The Atari 2600+ with its cartridges has been compared to a turntable with its vinyl records, and that's romantically nostalgic. But if the turntable is defined as the "Analog" source par excellence then at the same time it is understandable that some people want an Atari 2600+ equipped with a _native_ analog video output (in addition to the HDMI output already provided). I know there are many "HDMI to Composite Converters" but they will produce additional latency compared to a _native_ analog video output. Since Retro-Bit and Hyperkin currently produce several consoles equipped with both HDMI and Composite output, then I assume that there is still significant demand for analog video output in this market. Yes, it would of been a nice to have but I didnt believe the benefit vs cost made it warrented.

Oh come on now. Any time I have noticed, that "all 100 people I have been around think I am an asshole", it's obviously those 100 people with a problem, not me!

No. Time to ignore.

Then do it. Find a SNES developer that wants to work with you and get it done. If you want people to respect you, then follow through with your goals instead of repeating "I could do it, I could do it, as long as I find someone who will spend the time to analyze the game maker demos I send them and rebuild them on the SNES, someone to write the music, someone to produce the cartridges, etc" Now judging by your expertise (design, art), instead of asking developers to program games for you, why don't you volunteer yourself towards someone else's SNES project as an artist/designer? That's something that would actually be beneficial to the SNES dev scene, and that's the advice you were given on SNES dev before you were banned for suicide bait. A programmer volunteering himself to program a game for an artist is much less likely than an artist volunteering himself to create assets for a programmer. But instead of doing that, you're waiting around for a programmer to magically approach you and make your game for you. I would say that indicates "excessive pride", your idea that your Game Maker demos are so revolutionary that everyone will want to work with you, despite your reputation. Of course I've inferred that last part, but if it isn't ego it's ignorance. TLDR; if you want to help the SNES dev community, ACTUALLY help it. Don't wait for it to help you.

To give context for those who don't know the previous conversation: I have started a Stella branch introducing a "rtstella" target that tries to address the scheduling issues I previously pointed out. It replaces (almost all) mutexes with spinlocks and runs the emulation core on a thread with realtime priority that never voluntarily yields control to the scheduler. The thread runs continuously and is only briefly put into a busy-wait loop while the main thread handles events and copies out the next frame for rendering. @Al_Nafuur has retested his bit banging code with rtstella, and cartridges now run at full speed, provided the bit banging code uses a delay that is sufficiently precise and small (using a NOP-loop). Now @Al_Nafuur, to address your last message 😃 I am very positively surprised that the first attempt already results in full speed. The fact that you need to rely on a sufficiently short delay is not surprising. The full time for a bus cycle mustn't be longer than 1/1.18MHz (delay + emulation + GPIO access), otherwise you cannot ever get full speed. I suspect that the other delay mechanisms are too coarse and generate too long delays for this to work out. In fact, this also may explain while normal Stella gets even slower when you switch to the NOP loop: if the cycle time is too long, Stella will not sleep between timeslices (it is too slow anyway), resulting in less preemption points. Once you start staying within the time budget it will start sleeping between timeslices, and you loose more time to the scheduler. I am not surprised that the PlusCart requires longer delays, the code for some banking schemes is pretty tight on the time budget that you have between real 2600 bus cycles. DPC is particularly bad, supercharger too. As for the actual delay mechanism, imo an external timer that raises a GPIO once it expires is a good idea. The only thing to keep in mind is that GPIO access comes with an intrinsic delay, too, so there is a limit on the resolution that could be achieved this way. I saw benchmarks on the web that I can't seem to locate just now, something like 80MHz I think. The internal timer in the Broadcom would do, too, but it is very possible that Linux is already using and managing it, which may be why you couldn't get it to behave as expected. We'd either have to use a timer that is unused by the OS, or explicitly deactivate it in the kernel, which may or may not be possible. Regarding rtstella: the next thing I want to do is to remove various batching optimisations that we do to (which batch TIA and RIOT cycles and execute them in bigger chunks). Usually those are an improvement as they improve cache locality and reduce the time spent on loops, but in our case I think removing them will give a better and more predictable spread of processing times over the individual bus cycles. After that, we should try to get audio working properly. It is already working fine with some popping and underruns on my end, but that still is in a ARM64 Ubuntu VM on a M1 Mac, the real thing will likely behave differently. After that: buildroot 😏

If you're going with ProSystem 1.3, I recommend checking out of the forks by Tachi and what's currently used in Libretro. These have improved compatibility, and in particular support Rikki & Vikki's custom hardware. BupSystem, the emulator used for Rikki & Vikki's development and distribution, is also available for commercial licensing. This wouldn't be free, but the cost would go towards new features and improving compatibility. As of writing its accuracy is higher than ProSystem, but it'd take a little effort to catch up with a7800. It also runs fairly quick and is a good fit for low end targets.

I'm inclined to agree with you that booting a 20+ year member from the thread for that seemed a little overkill...BUT, then I noticed he mentioned Tommy T and everybody knows if you type his name 3 times in the same topic there will be disastrous consequences!!

Yeah it's called AtariAge, welcome!

Rule #1 everywhere: don't be an ass.

@ColecoGamer @SlidellMan @GoldLeader @wolfy62 @M-S @Madwindoman @Punisher5.0 @evilevoix @Stage_1_Boss @INTVCruise @retrorussell @Reaperman @roots.genoa @Razzie.P @Zap! @neogeo1982 @Jag_Mag @KidGameR186496 @Kiwi @SoundGammon @Serguei2 @bent_pin @Tanooki @Cobra Strike Down @Rick Dangerous @128Kgames @eightbit @ECWfan @SpicedUp! @Mikebloke @Hwlngmad @Steril707 @OldSchoolRetroGamer @NeoPancho @Franjo @MarkoCG77 @masschamber @joeatari1 @electricmastro @DJ Clae @Darrin9999 Hi guys, Great news! @japangameonline mentioned that a Japanese AES version of Yo-Yo Shuriken will also be available to purchase. PM them on AtariAge or off their Ebay page for those that would like to reserve a copy. Here's what was mentioned to me. "We received the Japanese yo-yo shuriken insert today, we need to receive the sticker next week We have put it on sale to advance orders" https://www.ebay.es/itm/235217830744 Anthony...

You are going be like this guy in this old Atari commercial "I'm going to test everything!" "everything?"

Yesterday...Ben walks into the Atari Age forum Today...."I think I've made a huge mistake" 😂 Jokes aside, it would be cool to test this, I can't see it working tbh but I would give it a try. Maybe the compumate has a better chance of being compatible.

Here are a couple of photos of a specially made cart PCB that is used in production to test that each pin on the consoles cartridge socket works

I see similar discussion in BBWW's thread, so it seems relevant to mention here... the game I'm premiering at PRGE is also not an exclusive. The only thing exclusive for PRGE will be the TBD lower price.

The only good Ingot is a dead Ingot. They're to be shot on sight; no questions asked.

It's the power of the fumes. Inhaling them allows one to drastically slow down the perception of time.

Albert flexes admin powers a lot less than I would. Also, I think that guy was literally drunk.

I heard back this morning and it does work.

Or fumes. You do realize that what people (especially actors) say in movie featurettes is bullshit, right?

Gentlemen and Gents, I now present to you the First disk designed to allow communication with the Foundation CP/M card with the TI. This was copied using a GreaseWeazle, I'm not sure if my previous attempt a coup[le of years ago was successful. You use Extended basic and Load the program ZE3 on the disk. Now I need to see if the other disk is around here to use on the CP/M side. I have Word star and others, but need to locate the MRS disk and try to flux copy it. Term Emul ZE3.dsk

Got it in the mail today and couldn't wait until the weekend to install it. This thing is phenomenal and completely changes what the 130XE is! Even typed in a small GTIA program with it and what a difference it makes! For those ordering and details on the 3D printed brackets, they lay on top of the PCB for a more stable or snug fit once inside the case. As can be seen here on the bottom left and right. And here you can see the dramatic difference of a NOS Atari 130XE keyboard compared to the modern new Decent XE with Falcon-themed keys: I will say though, I prefer to keep the original function keys over the 3D-printed ones but am slightly concerned that the keycap adapters or whatever is needed to make that happen may present alignment issues. Which would bug me more than having the 3D printed functions. I guess that will also make it more two-tone but believe that will ultimately be the way I go so as long as the alignment isn't an issue. Thanks for all your hardwork in making this happen and making them available for purchase!

I'm not the swearing type, but what the hell does that mean?

Yeah its this kind of attitude that drives me nuts. Why take away options? Just because you might have all the carts does not mean everyone else has. If you dont want to use a USB-C to load roms, dont do it. How does someone else using it affect you?

@Defender_2600 one more note, we are testing every cart we can find and noting down any issues we see related to color, controls, and more. As we identify things we can evaluate potential remedies. The work is ongoing.

Caching ROMs ..... I have an amusing story here, we finished up 2600 gameplay testing earlier on in the year and got a first build with 7800 game compatibility. So I headed over to the Embracer archive to test as many original 7800 carts as I could (they had about 30 games for 7800), 50/50 whether they worked - reasonable start. Weirdly though I came accross a couple of carts that played totally different games, something that I've never experienced before in my life. So I started digging, turns out the dev cached all 58 7800 games and was just checking the cartridges header file and then booting the game from a stored cache of ROMs! So the 7800 software development was scrapped immediately and had to be started afresh with a new developer, which delayed development for a few months but the new guy got there in the end, I've personally checked about 50 of the 58 7800 games released and they all work - the 8 not tested I just havent been able to get my hands on but we're confident they should work.

Heres a pic of Fatal Run 7800 playing

Hello as many of You remember, back in 2019 i have got my own injection form for SIO PLUGS. i have ordered then many transparent sio plugs to realize few projects i had my own vision.. Meanwhile, my daughter was born, I established own SMT automatic assembly line etc... but, finally : I have few projects want to show You, that utilize mentioned transparent sio plugs SioMidiPlayer / JIL SAM`mer/ https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=378 complex midi player, inside transparent sio plug and jack audio output: dreamblaster and sio2midi in micro factor/ SD DRIVE MINI: https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=375 many hardware changes, soon Sio2sd adopted firmware. also micro factor, transparent sio plug. meanwhile, Candle is preparing device that can load games via sio from audio files.. STAY TUNED

He kicked him from a thread for acting bad. He didn't ban him from the site for life, repo all his retro hardware, and kick his puppy on the way out of the house... Why are people so worried about someone getting in trouble for their actions? Sheeesh...

The Saturn version does hit 60 quite consistently, but it has a host of other issues that makes it un-fun later on in the game (which most don't experience because they have never made it particularly far). The Jag version chops up a lot and you don't have to get far to see it (just get farther in on the blue tubes and it's pretty obvious). Framerate issues can certainly be bothersome. It can have a major negative effect on gameplay responsiveness and can also make it more difficult to track what's happening on screen. That said, for some reason I never minded it much in Tempest 2000, I suppose because everything else (gameplay feel, visuals, sound package, mechanics and physics) hit so well in the Jaguar version.

Thanks for answering questions Ben, I have one to ask. Can a Sega Genesis or Sega Master System controller be used on this console out of the box? Thanks!

thanks for this, will read up and talk to the developer

Never reached them back then, sure will not reach them with my old thumbs now. So for me T2K runs fast enough 🙂

I am sure Al can provide you with test cards. If no ROM images are available, Stella has test ROMs in his repository.

I'll get back to you.

@Ben from Plaion I have the same question regarding EF(SC) (16 4K banks = 64K, hotspots at $1FE0..$1FEF, e.g. Grizzards, Robot Zed, Zippy the Porcupine, Space Taxi), DF(SC) (32 4K banks = 128K, hotspots at $1FC0..$1FDF, e.g. Penult) and BF(SC) (64 4K banks = 256K, hotspots at $1F80..$1FBF). See: https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/blob/master/src/emucore/CartEF.hxx https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/blob/master/src/emucore/CartDF.hxx https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/blob/master/src/emucore/CartBF.hxx

Hi @Ben from Plaion, did your team consider to support SB (SuperBanking) 128k-256k bankswitched games for the Atari 2600+? This would allow to play the cartridge 'Circus Convoy' by David Crane and Garry Kitchen from Audacity Games, and probably also future games by Audacity Games, like Dan Kitchen's 'Gold Rush'. About SuperBanking: There are either 32 or 64 4K banks, accessible at hotspots $800 - $81F (32 banks) and $800 - $83F (64 banks). All mirrors up to $FFF are also used ($900, $A00, ...). See https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/blob/master/src/emucore/CartSB.hxx

Being color blind and having a crappy memory, I was always frustrated trying to remember what piece was last removed from the board and the color of it. The game will now keep an image of it on the screen. I will have this part of the difficulty levels.

Speaking as a former 15 year old AOL kiddie who joined RGVC, it will probably be fine. Until the WebTV users show up.

Thanks! I do it by hand with a soldering iron and hot air soldering tool. It took a while to come up with a process that seems to work. First I take a tooth pick and apply the solder paste to the pads. Next, a soldering iron is used to melt the paste and tin all the pads. Excess solder is just shook off the soldering iron. Then, I lay the chips on the pads and use the hot air to solder them in place. Sometimes the chips want to float on the solder and I have to push them down with a dental pick. Afterwards, it's not uncommon to have to hunt down a bad solder joint, with a magnifying glass, and re-flow it with the soldering iron. On some occasions, I have to add more solder. Afterwards, the board is usually quite a mess with all the flux. So, I have a tupperware container with 91% alcohol and soak the board before scrubbing it with a tooth brush. In that picture, after I looked at the picture on the computer I noticed that near R80 there's a little dirt. It's residue from the alcohol bath and can be removed with a fingernail. I figured I'd just use the picture anyhow. 🙂

Here you go.